Plum rewards only offers a 5% discount online (plus points for purchases based on amount spent), while iRewards gives you 10% off in-store + the same 5% off online + 40% off bestsellers.

I’m more than a little pissed that I’d have to cancel my iRewards (and forfeit the $$$ I paid for it) to switch to Plum, but at the same time I feel as through iRewards are more rewarding. I’ll keep my iRewards until it expires, then switch. Still, that’s REALLY frustrating that they roll out this new free rewards program when I *JUST* renewed by iRewards a few months ago. What is the justification for having to forfeit iRewards, anyways? Why not allow us to keep both? I mean, we paid for it.

Wow – I’m an annual irewards member and I feel like Chapters just flipped me the bird. Like, take your loyalty and all the membership fees you’ve paid us over the years and shove it. Unbelievable that they’d not offer a rollover membership automatically to current ireward members and just double up the savings for the year of changeover. I’m in retail mktng and you KNOW that they discussed this around the board table and decided, “oh well, some people will be pissed, we’ll just deal with it”. Poor judgement in my opinon. Amazon.ca is starting to look better and better to me.

it seems very annoying and a slap in the face for irewards members…i just renewed mine too (March)…i will keep the irewards and my girlfriend can sign up for plum so we can use whatever card depending on the situation…

This seems really silly. You have to walk your butt to a store to get any actual points, but you can get 5% off online. So if you only ever buy online, it is just a permanent 5% off coupon. If you only ever buy in-store, you have to buy a lot to get anything. IRewards definitely sounds better for anyone who buys more than a thing a year. Amazon is usually cheaper/actual has what I want. Also I can’t find out how much you have to spend to get a point? Is it dollar for point or….?

I gave up on iRewards a year ago after realizing that I wasn’t saving more than the fee of the program, and Amazon was offering the same prices without having to pay for a loyalty card. Chapters.indigo.ca already has a relationship with Aeroplan, so I’m confused as to why they’d start their own new program. Why not just switch everything to Aeroplan and get more existing users?

For those of us with irewards, we benefit only with a spending of $450 a year or more. I’m assuming we only use it at Chapters instore. For every $250 spent, we save $25 with irewards, but we get $5 with the Plum reward. With a spending of $45, irewards members save $45 and get $10 back. As an irewards member, we break even (given the $35 membership cost). For $850 spent, irewards get $85 off and plum members get $20 back. Add the cost of the card and we actually only gain around $30 as irewards. That’s a lot to spend to save $30. If you shop online a lot, the Plum savings will offset irewards even further. So…unless you spend half a grand at Chapters, it’s probably not worth getting the irewards card. I will let my irewards card expire this year and switch to Plum after (and also, to make purchases online rather than in store). This is the incentive Chapters has given me with their new points program!!

The irewards did go up in price (35$ regular/30$ for teachers & seniors). So those of us just renewed the card, I guess we can say that we are lucky?!? We will still get our 10% off all books (40% off best-sellers) as well as up to 5% on online books. On top of that, because of the price raise on the card, they are now offering 5% off all magazines, toys, and gifts etc. At least, that’s what the girl at Chapters told me. Coupons will supposedly be emailed.

Plum is a points card and it’s free. Although it seems to take FOREVER to be able to redeem stuff with it. You get 10 pts for $1 spent. Lowest redemption level is 25000 pts/5$ off. So it means that I’d have to spend about 250$ of stuff to get 5$ off. I guess there’s the trade off.

I’ll have to check whether magazines will be covered here like turtlesoup reported.my irewards card is almost up but I’d renew if the mags were covered. Some of the ones I buy are $30 or $40.
Otherwise I’d get the Plum card because it’s free but I just don’t buy enough high priced books right now to justify the irewards card for another year esp. with a price increase.

Wow this is ridiculous…I hate that I just renewed my card because I’ve mostly been shopping online lately. At least the coupons you get when renewing will make up for it for me. I didn’t know that the price went up as well. Got mine beginning of March and it was still $25 for me..glad I did it quicker. Honestly I buy a ridiculous amount of books so it’s worth it for me either way, but that’s really annoying for the people that aren’t really getting much out of it. I probably won’t be renewing my iRewards card next year if they keep it that expensive though. They’re going to be losing a lot of business because of this for sure.

With the irewards calculations don’t forget the coupon book they give you when you renew. I used a few $5 off coupons which makes the irewards fee much more reasonable. Neither program works with eBooks though so I won’t renew my irewards.

The irewards card is now only really worth it if you’re spending over $400 in-store, however, there is a discount on pretty much everything now (except electronics and ebooks). When your card is up for renewal any cashier should be able to tell you your spending patterns and which card would be more beneficial to you. the plum card gets you 10 points for every dollar spent, but there is a lot of promotions to help you rack up points quickly (ie. triple the points on select items and bonus points when you set up an online profile). If you spend a lot of money at Chapters, it really just depends how you like to be rewarded. Irewards provides instant savings on the majority of items in store whereas with plum you have to earn your rewards and accrue them for a later date.

The irrewards/plum rewards things really has me ticked off. The irony is that had I not made the mistake of purchasing an irrewards membership I’d have been very happy about the plum rewards program. Losing the remainder of my irrewards membership without so much as a token number of plum point or whatever the hell they call them has me thinking Amazon makes more sense.

Why they want to piss off some of their best customers doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.